GCRTA gives final OK to new rail car purchase

Although the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority approved a contract
with Siemens Mobility for these new trains, they won’t be ready to ride here
until the summer of 2026. It remains to be seen if GCRTA’s existing trains
will last that long (Siemens). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

After at least eight years of discussion and planning, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) Board Members unanimously voted to approve the Rail Car Replacement Team’s recommendation of Siemens Mobility Incorporated as the preferred vendor to replace their aging rail fleet during today’s GCRTA Board meeting. This follows a detailed presentation and committee recommendation made on April 4.

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Haslams’ major announcement(s)

One or more announcements are expected, starting in a week about the
future of downtown Cleveland’s lakefront and the Cleveland Browns’
CrossCountry Mortgage Campus in Berea. If the results of those announce-
ments come to pass, downtown Cleveland’s lakefront and the north end of
Berea are going to look very different by the end of this decade (AoDK).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Cleveland Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Berea Mayor Cyril Kleem, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and others are due to make one or more big announcements starting next week that will include the lakefront football stadium, the Browns’ Berea campus, mixed-use developments around both plus a relocated Shoreway. The announcements will be about changes intended to activate the downtown lakefront by the end of this decade in ways it hasn’t been since the 1930s and to create a year-round fan-friendly village around the team’s suburban headquarters and practice facility, according to two sources familiar with the developments.

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Library Lofts: on time despite appearances

Library Lofts is two buildings in one — a nine-story apartment building
atop a two-story library, each with separate owners. The complicated coor-
dination between owners is one of the apparent causes of the slow pace of
construction. This photo was taken on April 9, 2023. Compare it with the
 photo below from more than six months ago on Sept. 30, 2022 (Gruver).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Last September, construction crews in Cleveland’s University Circle appeared to be close to topping off a cast-in-place concrete podium within which a new, two-story Martin Luther King Jr. Branch Library will be built and, on top of that a nine-story apartment building will rise. In the six and a half months since, one full story has been added to the podium. And, according to the project’s development team, you won’t see new stories added above it until mid-summer. By just about anyone’s book, that’s a long time getting through a story.

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Woodhill Homes gets funding boost

Woodhill Center East, a 58-unit multi-family residential building in the
foreground and 19 rental homes in the background, are rising at 11305
Woodland Ave. But their construction costs are also rising as a result of
inflation and other pandemic-related disruptions. An additional $10
million in federal funds were awarded to cover those costs (CMHA).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

To cover rising construction costs resulting from inflation and other pandemic-related disruptions, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded $10 million to the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) and the City of Cleveland for the Woodhill Homes Transformation Plan. The funding is from a Choice Neighborhoods Supplemental Funding Grant to further support the development of replacement housing in Cleveland’s Buckeye-Woodhill neighborhood. HUD awarded similar funds to 15 other current Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grantees to address their pandemic-related disruptions as well.

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Bridgeworks wins financing, start date

Thanks to the closing of a financing gap, developers of the long-planned,
15-story Bridgeworks tower at the northeast corner of West 25th Street
and the Detroit-Superior Bridge anticipate demolishing vacant buildings
on the site in June with construction following immediately thereafter.
In their place will rise a mixed-use tower with apartments, hotel,
offices, retail, parking and public spaces (MASS/LDA).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

For more than two years, a planned high-rise at the west end of the Detroit-Superior Bridge in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood has sought public funding to fill a financing gap. After missing out twice on tax credits from a statewide program, the developers looked closer to home and found the resources to start and finish construction. This week, the developers united under Bridgeworks LLC were awarded the final pieces of the fiscal puzzle to the $108 million project, allowing them to start work in June, they said.

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Greater Cleveland office market still struggling

Downtown Cleveland’s office market continues to struggle in the wake of
the pandemic that caused employees to work remotely, often from home.
Getting them back into the office may involve creating public incentives
to offset employers’ costs of adding more office amenities (KJP).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Newmark, one of the world’s leading real estate services firms, issued its first quarter 2023 (23Q1) office market report for Greater Cleveland today and it continues to show a worsening situation in the region’s office sector. While only one submarket within Greater Cleveland showed an increase in office occupancies, none are taking it on the chin more than the central business district (CBD), its retailers, restaurants and transportation providers. But that data may have been disproportionately affected by a major deal.

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Treo opening doors on West 25th

 

Tenants are already moving their stuff into to Treo on West 25th
Street, where Tremont meets Ohio City, even as construction
workers put the finishing touches on the building and the
landscaping (KJP). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Treo, named for where Tremont meets Ohio City, is the first of the big, market-rate apartment buildings to come to this no-man’s land part of town. Built on the site of a former auto repair and scrap yard business along a lesser-traveled section of West 25th Street, Treo’s first resident moved into the 171-unit property last week as construction work is substantially completed.

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